BSA contributor and urban explorer Garry Hunter just stumbled willingly into an alley in London where Street Artists ROA and Phlegm had transformed the walls and he shares his experience here with us, along with some images of the work.
By New York standards, London snowstorms are occasional and fleeting, with this winter’s first carpet of white disappearing within 48 hours. This window of opportunity on a rare warm day prompted a trip to South East London, ancient habitat of second hand car dealers and purveyors of stolen goods. Peckham is off the Tube line, but an over ground artery to Kent allows quick access from Central London. It is very close to this Rye station where there lies an unassuming dark alley that opens out into a plethora of monochrome masterworks.
Modern Flemish master ROA has decorated four walls of an industrial yard with Gothic bird skulls, while the remaining doorways, loading bays and other brick surfaces show an entangled narrative of dark materials by Sheffield-based Phlegm. These hidden gems were only made fully accessible by the serendipitous arrival of a resident in the adjoining apartment, who had keys to the barred gate of the yard.
As I leave back through the tunnel to the High Street, my head spinning with intense imagery, the waft of goat curry mingles with odors from an Arabic tea-stall, the hawker’s call and the loud strains of passing London buses. Back to reality, cheap shops selling tat and the predictable chain stores of an English high street; an identity being crushed by corporate greed.
1. Giants Fans in Manhattan Streets (VIDEO)
2. “F*ck Art” at Museum of Sex
3. CASA DE EMPENO at Anonymous (Mexico City)
4. “Love & Hate” Group Show at Stolen Space (London)
5. CREEPY at Okazi Gallery (Berlin)
6. Chris Stain and H. Veng Smith at C.A.V.E. Gallery (Los Angeles)
7. Winter Group Show at White Walls Gallery (San Francisco)
8. Zes and Retna new show “Excavated Revelations”
9. German duo Herakut paint a mural at Big Art Labs (VIDEO)
Giants Fans in Manhattan Streets (VIDEO) Weeeeeeeee are the CHAMPEEEEENSSSS
Streets in Manhattan were bloated with about a million crazy football fans this week as the Superbowl-winning New York Giants had a parade and almost everybody skipped school and work to go see their heroes. Office workers literally dumped garbage cans of shredded paper out the window en masse while fans poured into the city from every direction, including nearby states, to roar as the players rode by. Some people were well behaved, but they were hard to see or hear because of all the hooligans raising holy hell. Here’s a video taste of it – some seriously funny sh*t. Watch out for unbridled testosterone fueled aggression, swear words and Giants inspired freestylin. NSFW, but okay for the street.
Click here to read our article and interviews with the curators and some of the artists.
CASA DE EMPENO at Anonymous (Mexico City)
In Mexico City Anonymous Gallery new group show “Casa de Empeño” opens today to the general public. Centered around the themes of a Pawn Shop the show includes internationally recognized Street Artists Judith supine. Maya Hayuk and Davil Ellis among others.
For further information regarding this show click here
“Love & Hate” Group Show at Stolen Space (London)
“Love & Hate” the new group show at Stolen Space Gallery in London opens today to the general public. With the participation of several Street Artists from different cities including: D*Face, Dan Witz, Miss Van, Ronzo, Toshi, Will Barras, Word To Mother, Jeff Soto and EINE among others.
Arth daniels
Chloe early
D*Face
Dan Witz
David Bray
Kai & Sunny
Miss Van
Ronzo
Sylvia Ji
Toshi
Will Barras
Word To Mother
Von
Jeff Soto
Pete Fowler
EINE
Josie Morway
Kelly Allen
Charles Krafft
Ramon Maiden
Ryan Callanan
Curtis Kulig
William Stevenson
Today on Fun Friday:
1.”Making Faces” at Opera Gallery (Soho, NY)
2. “Nostalgia” at Rook & Raven (London)
3. “Bone Yard Project” at Pima Air & Space Museum (Tucson, AZ)
4. Phlegm at Nuart (VIDEO)
5. Official Trailer for “Getting Up” (VIDEO)
6. The Big Egg Hunt: Baku Magazine x Secret Wars (VIDEO)
“Making Faces” at Opera Gallery (Soho, NY)
An unusual collection of portraiture is on display starting today in Soho that knocks your head for a spin because of it’s loose theme that can stretch to embrace a century or two, a few continents, and about 30 schools of art.
Favorite pairing from last nights opening: Picasso next to Judith Supine. If he only knew.
“Making Faces” throws a cocktail party for old masters along with contemporary fine and Street Artists, including Judith Supine, Bast, Paul Insect, Rostaar, B., Zhang Xiaogang, Ron English and Kid Zoom sharing wall space with Chagall, Matisse, Miro and Basquiat among others.
For further information regarding this show click here
“Nostalgia” at Rook & Raven (London)
At the Rook & Raven Gallery in London the group show “Nostalgia” opens todaywith new works by Various & Gould, Dain, David Shillinglaw and Stinkfish, among others.
“Nostalgia” participants: Terry O’Neill, Dave White, DAIN, Rosie Emerson, David Shillinglaw, Various and Gould, Alex Daw, James Mylne, Stinkfish, Charlie Masson
Here is a video of David Shillinglaw, who prepared his piece for the “Nostalgia” show over the course of a week:
For further information regarding this show click here
“Bone Yard Project” at Pima Air & Space Museum (Tucson, AZ)
Another mind-blowing project – curated by Medvin Sobio and Carlo McCormick and conceived by Eric Firestone – opens tomorrow in Tucson, where there is a lot of space. Carcasses of planes lovingly wrecked by artists you love; The Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona announces the opening of “Round Trip: Art From The Bone Yard Project” this Saturday January 28.
More than 30 artists have participated in Round Trip including DC Super 3 planes painted by graffiti artists How & Nosm, Nunca, and Retna, and a C97 cockpit by Saner, and C45 planes by Faile and Andrew Schoultz.
For further information regarding this show click here
The Bone Yard Project 2012 by Viejas del Mercado (Medvin Sobio & 塚本清市) Featuring Retna, Nunca, Saner and How & Nosm.
Also happening this weekend:
At the Urban Folk Art Gallery in Brooklyn founder Adam Suerte has curated a show that includes ten years of work from his personal collection. Click here for more information.
Phlegm at Nuart (VIDEO)
Official Trailer for “Getting Up” (VIDEO)
“After being diagnosed with ALS and rendered almost completely paralyzed, legendary L.A. graffiti artist Tony “Tempt” Quan gets his voice back through technology that reads the movement of his eyes and enables him to create art and write once again.”
The Big Egg Hunt: Baku Magazine x Secret Wars (VIDEO)
Various & Gould “Serendipity 2” Detail (Image courtesy of the gallery)
NostalgiaRook & Raven Gallery is proud to present ‘Nostalgia’, their first show of 2012, featuring an eclectic mix of artwork, games and ephemerae from a diverse collection of artists.
Artists exhibiting include:
Terry O’Neill
Dave White
DAIN
Rosie Emerson
David Shillinglaw
Various and Gould
Alex Daw
James Mylne
Stinkfish
Charlie Masson
Team Robbo, the fun-loving anti-Banksy graffti Collective from South London who is not pleased with the appearance of work by the world-known Street Artist. Even in his hometown of Bristol, Banksy gets no respect from Robbo, and apparently The Rolling Stones are now buffing as well? Team Robbo employs a classic Stones lyric “Paint it Black” by way of engaging the public with a very open demonstration of tough street love and ironically, the only thing you may remember from the effort is the refrain.
Interviewed regarding this Street Art/Graffiti rivalry that sends bloggers and print journalists into paradoxisms of high alert, this local London duck was non-plussed. While congenially posing for a photo opp on Regents Canal, Mallard seemed to know little about the whole home turf affair and wondered aloud if we had any bread crumbs.
Thanks to Garry Hunter for his in-the-field photography.
Berlin based artist Evol took a trip outside his home town across the English Channel to London to create his most recent installation. Known for his ingenious and humorous re-imagining of existing street structures as architecture – sometimes with “giant” tags across them, Evols’ painstaking attention to detail puts you inside his miniature world instantly.
We’re very pleased that writer Garry Hunter joins us today to give BSA readers a better understanding of the work of Evol;
Evol has a fascination for sites that focus on meat production, having previously chosen a former Dresden slaughterhouse for his installation Caspar-David-Friedrich-Stadt. Perhaps influenced by Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse 5, a fantasy novel set during the firebombing of the city in World War Two, the title references the most important German artist of the early 19th Century. While Freidrich is best known for his allegorical landscape paintings, Evol creates pieces that comment on the very opposite of the Romantic school – urban decay.
A housing block with a graffiti tag is nothing new, but upon closer inspection these images reveal how cleverly Berlin based Evol plays with scale and social comment. Taking stencilling to new levels of detail, including St. Georges Cross English flags beloved by soccer fans and the satellite dishes, he recently completed this major piece in London’s Smithfield meat market.
By transforming a dozen concrete blocks into miniature apartment blocks Evol reproduces the monstrosity of the estate that included his former Berlin home into a miniature modernist housing estate. The installation has become a tea break destination for contractors working on the nearby Cross-rail high speed transport link.
1. New Video from The Paris Underbelly Project
2. The Underbelly Project Art Show
3. “UR NewYork” solo show “Breaking and Entering”
4. Swoon’s “Murmuration” (London)
5. “Wild Life” a group show that includes Dan Witz and D*Face at Stolen Space Gallery
6. Xenz presents his solo show “Cloud Cuckoo Land” at Blackall Studios in London
7. Skount solo show at the Aalborg Hotel in Amsterdam
8.”Wallflowers” a group show that includes LUDO at Carhartt Gallery in Weil Am Rehein Friedlingen, Germany
9. Romanian Artists Allan Dalla and Cosmonotrip (VIDEO)
Opens today to the general public at Art Basel at 78NW 25th Street at 5:00 pm. There will be a book signing at 6:00 pm with many artists in attendance.
UR NewYork solo show “Breaking and Entering”
In Miami today, a solo show by two New Yorkers who keep it real.
The scale! The hand coloring! The reclaimed cabinetry! Brooklyn Native Swoon has been, for weeks, laboring in London in preparation for her solo show “Murmuration”, which opens today at Black Rat Projects Gallery. Telling the stories of people and characters she has often introduced to the streets of New York, Swoon has brought Thalassa (“sea”), a primordial Greek sea goddess to command the tunnel, and to adorn a small passage in London as a wheatpaste.
Check out the video of Swoon on the street with Time Out London at the end of this post. (video stills copyright Time Out London)
Thanks to Mike Snelle for sending to us a handful of process shots of the installation. He promises to clean up some of this walking area before the doors open tonight!
Artists interpretation of the living world in Sculpture, Painting & Installation.The wild life of wildlife.
A flower growing through the crack in the pavement, the ivy scaling the fascia of a building, camouflaging, cloaking, pulling it to the ground, the tree growing around a concrete pillar, engulfing it slowly, morphing year on year. The birds nest in the rafters of a roof, made up of twigs and plastic ties, the nested young being fed the preservative pumped, calorie powered garbage bin rewards. These are glimpses of wildlife interacting, adjusting, adapting to the environment that we’ve created, over, around, on top of it, the once green meadow now a sea of steel work, glass and poured concrete, trees confined to their architect planned and perfectly aligned boxes.
But our wild life, this wildlife is playing a slow game, a slow deathly dance between the static, lifeless concrete structures we’ve built and the unstoppable force of nature. Adapt or be adapted, adjust or be adjusted, remember me? I was here before you, I’ve always been here, you need me, I am life.
Is mother nature reclaiming our temporary oasis or is it adapting to the obstacles that we’ve put in its way or are we now having to listen to the reminder that this place is not ours, we are simply borrowing it?
Confirmed Artists:
Josie Morway (Painter)
Rose Sanderson (Collage)
Jennifer Murphy (Painter)
Kelly Allen – (Painter)
D*Face (Mixed media)
Dan Witz (Mixed media)
Jake Wood Evans (Painter)
Roxanne Jackson (Sculptor)
Kelly McCallum (Sculptor)
Jessica Joslin (Sculptor)
Kai & Sunny (Mixed media)
Katja Holtz (Painter)
Renhui Zhao (Mixed Media)In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia.
How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life.
If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.
– Charles Lindbergh
StolenSpace Gallery | Stolenspace Gallery, The Old Truman Brewery, 91 Brick Lane | London, UK E1 6QL, United Kingdom
Black Rat Projects is excited to invite you to join us for the opening of ‘Murmuration’, an installation by New York artist Swoon on the first of December at BRP gallery from 6 to 8.30pm.
British artist, Xenz presents a new major solo show, Cloud Cuckoo Land in London this December.
Famed for his graffiti murals, the artist exhibits a beautiful collection of new landscape paintings which immerse the viewer in an undiscovered world filled with exotic species drawn from the vivid depths of his imagination.
Xenz offers a panoramic view of his fantasy world, presenting a strange utopia where peculiar plants, insects and birds are sighted among the tropical lagoons of moonlit forests. But with the satirical slant of an artist who paints from a dark, gritty warehouse in Hackney Wick, viewers can expect interesting twists such as a bird of paradise sporting Burberry feathers.
Cloud Cuckoo Land shows a body of work created over the last two years. In addition to a new collection of paintings and prints, Xenz’s newest work has seen him experiment with scale by painting on large-scale murals that divide into smaller, compact and highly-desirable pieces.
Xenz successfully marries fine art with urban art forms, using the spray can to capture fragments of memory and subject matter often drawn from the natural world. A love of ornithology and a search for ever-exotic wildlife has led to this greater evolution of the artist’s work.
Xenz explains: “Cloud Cuckoo Land is a kind of childhood fantasy of setting sail to discover a lost world, but ending up in an opium den in Singapore. It’s a celebration of creativity; something happy and joyful, but with a slight twist. I suppose living as an artist is seen as living in cloud cuckoo land by many people and I want to celebrate this by showing people what my dreams look like. Scientists estimate that there are more than 7 million undiscovered species on the planet — that’s inspiration right there!”
An extraordinary cohesion between mind, memory and spray can, allows this influential artist to walk up to a wall or canvas and paint epic landscapes and fantasy dreamscapes from his imagination. Offering a sense of escapism, a Xenz painting has universal appeal, and in the last two years alone, his work has been commissioned for a show by the British Council in India, exhibited globally from Australia to Ibiza, and his work hangs in mud huts in Gambia to celebrity homes in Chelsea.
Xenz paints landscapes imbued with escapism and symbolism and his background in graffiti is still evident. Look closely at a Xenz composition and you might find the letters of his tag worked into the twisted vines or the rocks in a waterfall. “It’s like a game, trying to decipher the code,” he says. “All my work is about escapism: the exotic and that vein. It’s about freedom and I suppose I’m trying to preserve a sense of value in art. I like to create work that takes you somewhere; a picture that takes a few moments more to soak up than an instant slogan or striking image.”
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
